He was born in 1949 in Northallerton, Yorkshire, UK. He formed himself in the varied mileux of loving friends and family, Royal Air Force camps, private and state schools, the University of Leeds’ Sociology Department, and the libertarian revolutionary movements of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. His utopian longing continued to guide my work when he became a cultural sociologist in the mid-1990s. He’s lived with Jane Storr since 1971. They married in 2003. They have two children, Rose (b. 1975) and John (b. 1979), a son-in-law, Guy Dixon, a grand-daughter, Miranda (b. 2006), a grand-son, Robert (b. 2008), and an almost daughter-in-law, Anabel Liebovic. All of them are making their own futures.